By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has had a very bad couple of months. As a result of its successive oversight failures and selective enforcement of the nation's securities laws and regulations, so have the nation's financial sector, economy and taxpayers. Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the SEC has another - and potentially even more problematic - "shoe" about to drop.
First, there were the successive meltdowns of publicly traded financial corporations for which the SEC must bear some measure of responsibility. As the Associated Press put it, the agency's own "inspector general determined that the agency's monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking." Everyone also recalls Warren Buffet's warning that derivatives such as subprime mortgage securities were "financial products of mass destruction."
Then came last week's revelations by the SEC's chairman, former California Rep. Christopher Cox, that the agency had repeatedly had "credible and specific allegations" brought to its attention "since at least 1999" concerning the self-confessed shyster-financier Bernard Madoff. Had the staff of the SEC (which included an attorney married to Mr. Madoff's niece) not persistently looked the other way, these warnings should have been sufficient to prevent what ultimately became a ruinous $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
The next fiasco for the Securities and Exchange Commission may prove to be its systematic failure to address the insinuation into the U.S. capital markets of financial products that, by their reckoning, do not conform to American securities laws and regulations. These products have come to be known collectively as Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) and further threaten what is left of the integrity of our free market system. Worse yet, they - and the theo-political-legal doctrine, Shariah, from which they spring - pose a real threat to our society and form of government, as well. Read more ...
The Securities and Exchange Commission has had a very bad couple of months. As a result of its successive oversight failures and selective enforcement of the nation's securities laws and regulations, so have the nation's financial sector, economy and taxpayers. Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the SEC has another - and potentially even more problematic - "shoe" about to drop.
First, there were the successive meltdowns of publicly traded financial corporations for which the SEC must bear some measure of responsibility. As the Associated Press put it, the agency's own "inspector general determined that the agency's monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking." Everyone also recalls Warren Buffet's warning that derivatives such as subprime mortgage securities were "financial products of mass destruction."
Then came last week's revelations by the SEC's chairman, former California Rep. Christopher Cox, that the agency had repeatedly had "credible and specific allegations" brought to its attention "since at least 1999" concerning the self-confessed shyster-financier Bernard Madoff. Had the staff of the SEC (which included an attorney married to Mr. Madoff's niece) not persistently looked the other way, these warnings should have been sufficient to prevent what ultimately became a ruinous $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
The next fiasco for the Securities and Exchange Commission may prove to be its systematic failure to address the insinuation into the U.S. capital markets of financial products that, by their reckoning, do not conform to American securities laws and regulations. These products have come to be known collectively as Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) and further threaten what is left of the integrity of our free market system. Worse yet, they - and the theo-political-legal doctrine, Shariah, from which they spring - pose a real threat to our society and form of government, as well. Read more ...
Source: The Washington Times
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